Other tools to improve your working environment

After presenting the Google tools yesterday I want to present other tools that might also help to improve the working experience. One of these tools is Symbaloo a tool which helps you to organize your browser by creating an individual page with all the important websites that you need every day.  I have created an example which I present you in the following screenshot:


Another tool that might be interesting for you is Hootsuite a social media management tool. It allows you to manage all of your social accounts like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube on one page.

I have learned of these tools during a course which I took at the Universidad de Burgos.
In this blogpost, I also want to answer some questions that where asked in the course:

1. What social networks can I use to do research?
   For me personally, the most used network is Researchgate as this platform connects many researchers throughout the world. Besides this, I am using many different platforms to get information and stay in contact with others. At the current time with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic youtube has become a big platform for me, as it contains conferences that couldn`t take place as they usually would. 
2. How can I take advantage of using these social networks within my scope of knowledge?
   As previously mentioned especially at the current moment the social networks offer an alternative to the classical meet-ups and conference that I would attend and they allow us, researchers, to stay connected. 
3. What is your opinion about social networking services for the researcher 2.0?
   I think every researcher of the current date need to utilize social networks to stay connected and up-to-date. I am already using a lot of these tools in my daily work like the Google tool suite or Researchgate. These tools make my life a lot easier and most often is the only drawback of the data privacy concerns. 

After explaining all this I want to give all fellow students at the University of Burgos feedback for the course Investigación 2.0:

I can really recommend the course as it provides a lot of information which is important for every researcher. What I liked the most about it was the diversity of support that was offered through videos, documents and a forum. This was especially important, as I am not from Spain and therefore not familiar with the language that the course was intended for. Despite this, I could take the course as I could use a translated version of the documents instead of the videos. 

I also liked the practical way that all of the information are presented. Instead of just a bunch of theoretical concepts, the course is designed around trying the tools out. 

Opportunities offered through Google services

Up until today I think my most frequently used tools are provided by Google. Especially if I am doing collaborative work with other researchers. The tool suite containing  Google Drive, Docs Slides, Forms and much more covers a wide range of tasks.
To give you an example of the possibilities. that are provided by the tools I have created a simple form: https://forms.gle/ys7sgAmebsEKpt3D8

What I also like about the tools is, that Google provides comparably big storage for free (in comparison to other cloud storages). As you can see in the Screenshot I have not even used half of my storage in the last couple of years:

What I can especially recommend is to install Google Drive on the local computer and synch the data automatically with the cloud to prevent a data loss. For example, I always synchronize my literature collection to prevent data loss. Zotero the literature management program I am using is automatically copied into my drive, which you can see in the screenshot below: 

I hope you liked the insight into the tools that I am using for my daily work.

Managing the flood of information in today's world

During research, I often find it most difficult not to get lost in the flood of information. To prevent this from happening I want to test tools that might help me to be better organized. 

The tools that I am testing are Feedly and Diigo. Feedly is a tool to aggregate the news from other platforms (like websites or blogs), to stay up-to-date. At first try, it seems pretty nice and easy to use. Here is a screenshot to show you how it looks:

Besides Feedly, I am also testing Diigo. It offers a way to manage information through bookmarks, notes and grouping.

For a first impression I also added a Screenshot of Diigo:

First Steps Towards a Blog

Hello reader,

this is the start of my blog, which will document the steps towards my Ph.D. The working title of my thesis is Prototyping kit for everyday needs (PEN).

If you want to follow me and my research you might want to follow my social channels:

• About.me
  
• ORCID
  
• Google Scholar
  
• ResearchGate
  

To get a starting point in prototyping you can check view this video:

For further reading consider this blog to get a basic understanding of product development or look into the Inclusive Design Toolkit.

Best Regards

Marc Schmidt